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Build A Lasting Culture: Set A Deadline. Ship. Iterate. Repeat.

Once you've begun building buy-in through inviting your key playmakers and stakeholders into the creation process of the cultural collateral that you're crafting to help inform who you are and who you're becoming as an organization, you need to get that thing out into the world. It's far to easy to just say whoever is taking the lead on this project needs to set a date and ship it.

Parkinson's Law is the is the truism that: work will expand to fill the time available for its completion. Meaning, give yourself a freaking deadline to actually ship your project, otherwise you'll just keep tweaking and perfecting and never actually get it out into to the world to make an impact.

In creating our brand platform for a non-profit I served at (the document describing and guiding how we look, how we feel, how we sound as a charity to the outside world), I set a series of mini-deadlines to ship each section of our brand platform draft to our team of collaborators to add input on each week.

Without a deadlines, procrastination-parading-as-perfectionism is inevitable.

Set a final date for a launch party/celebration within your company. Not only will this force you to actually ship your strategic plan, brand book, culture code, or policy, but will help the idea spread.

This will help get your project completed AND will also be a crucial step in building a broader buy-in across your entire organization—getting them excited about your new direction, and the cultural identity or standard you want to living into.

Be sure to make it as much of a party as you can. Build buzz. Have food, always have food. And be proud as you actively work to create and direct your company culture in an intentional and relevant way.

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This is part three in our series on "Strategies in Building A Culture That Sticks". Find other parts here: